The Simpsons

The hometown of the Simpson family—Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie—is arguably the most famous fictional city of the last 30 years, and whose precise geographical location has been kept hilariously vague (even featuring area codes from Missouri and Puerto Rico).

POINTS OF INTEREST: The Simpson home. The Kwik-E-Mart. Springfield Elementary School. Moe’s Tavern. The Springfield nuclear power plant. The Android’s Dungeon and Baseball Shop. The First Church of Springfield.

LIVABILITY: Even taking into account its not-very-good schools, endearingly corrupt mayor, and recent failed bid to win the rights to host the Summer Olympics, Springfield sounds like a pretty decent place to live. Anywhere but Shelbyville…

REAL-LIFE INSPIRATION: It may not have any bearing on the cartoon town’s still-mysterious location, but series creator Matt Groening recently revealed (as you can see in the clip below) that it was initially based on the city of Springfield . . . Oregon.

Was Walton's Mountain, VA too small to be included on this list? The house (it always seemed as the family was about the only one with a radio, so everyone came by) the school, Godsey's store, the baptist church, and the Appalachian Mountains were all points of interest. And the show was on longer than most of those listed in this article.

@WJK1@VanAnderson Ahh, I think it's probably that there was an apostrophe-s added for the show's production. So "Roslyn Cafe" was "Roslyn's Cafe" in Cicely. The mural has been restored to its pre- Northern Exposure state, so that apostrophe-s was, in fact, painted over.